Elderly Manappe sits on the verandah of her home in Thekkupana hamlet, clutching a bag of beans that she has foraged in the wild terrain of her native Attappadi tribal belt. She isn’t sure of her age. “I have no education,” she says with a resigned sigh, and gesticulates with her thumb to explain that she uses it for everything, including voting since her youth.
Times are anyway changing. Winds of learning are shaking up laidback Attappadi, propelling the hilly stretch of eastern Palakkad to newer vistas. Not knowing one’s age will soon be a thing of the past. Behind Manappe’s home is a sign of it: there resides Kalliamma and Nagappan, who have three children. One of the kids, Rangappan, is 10 and attends the weekend class of Project Shine.
That is the name of a scheme training tribal children below the age of 12 to appear for a national-level entrance exams for admissions to Sainik and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools. Kalliamma comes down from the forested hill, with a heavy bundle of...
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